Technical Debt Resources

Here are 3 articles about technical debt that I’ve found really interesting. They are a great addition to my article How You Can Leverage Technical Debt & Why You Should, which explains why technical debt is a leverage in the context of an early stage startup.

Organizational Debt is Like Technical debt But Worse — by steve blank. This article does not focus on technical debt in the context of an early stage startup. Instead, Steve analyses the case of one of his clients who was challenged by the transition from startup to large company. That challenge is what Steve refers to as Organizational Debt, where the culture nurtured during your early stage startup does not scale, or fit the new culture required in a large company.

Conceptual Debt is Worse than Technical Debt — by Nicolae Rusan. This article explains why products designed around the wrong conceptual models will incur a type of debt far more damaging than a traditional technical debt. Nicolae explores ways to identify that type of debt, and ways to avoid it. This article is excellent and makes a lot of sense. However, in the context of an early stage startup, your conceptual debt is inherent to the fact that you are testing your assumptions. How You Can Leverage Technical Debt & Why You Should explains what are the leverages you can pull from technical debt which will help de-risk your business model, and then help you to define more adequate conceptual model. At Neap we also heavily rely on Knowledge Crunching to ensure that our conceptual models are as valid as possible.